Sarah Hyland Says She Was 'Very, Very, Very Close' To Taking Her Own Life

posted by Hayden Brooks -
Jan 11, 2019

Modern Family star Sarah Hyland has been vocal about experiencing depression and suicidal thoughts after her body started rejecting a kidney that her father gave her years earlier. Since sharing the big revelation with Self in early December, the 28-year-old appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Friday (January 11) to talk a little more about how she overcame the "really, really hard" time in her life.

"I have an amazing job, an amazing support system, but…after 26, 27 years of just always being sick and being in chronic pain every single day, you don't know when you're going to have the next good day. It's really, really hard," she told the comedian, adding that she's had about 16 surgeries. "I would write letters in my head to loved ones of why I did it and my reasoning behind it, how it was nobody's fault and I didn't want to write it down on paper because I didn't want anyone to find it because that's how serious I was."

Asked how close she was to taking her own life, Hyland became candid with the daytime talk show host. "I was very, very, very, very close, yeah," she replied.

Hyland credited herself and sharing her emotions with others as some of the steps towards finding recovery. "I finally said it out loud to someone and that someone—I'd been saying, 'I need to go to see a therapist. I think I need to go see a therapist again,' and they were like, 'No, no, why would you see one? You can just talk to me,'" she recalled.

"When I said it out loud, they were like, 'Oh, you need to see a therapist,' and that's when I was like, 'Ok, I don't think you're going to help me. I think I need to really do this on my own and really do even more digging and soul-searching,' and just saying it out loud helped immensely because I kept it to myself for months and months at a time and saying it out loud really helped."